


Begin Afresh

by renquise



Category: Ookiku Furikabutte | Big Windup!
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-10-17
Updated: 2013-10-17
Packaged: 2017-12-29 16:13:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,750
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1007443
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/renquise/pseuds/renquise
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hanai knows that Mihashi is the first from the team to get his, though everyone talks about it in the locker room, about what gifts their siblings have, and who is going to get the most badass gift, and about the gifts the girls in their class got a few years before. It’s nervousness, maybe, that causes it, because it’s your gift, and who knows what it’s going to be.</p><p>(Or, a mundane superpower AU.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Begin Afresh

**Author's Note:**

  * Translation into Русский available: [Начать сначала](https://archiveofourown.org/works/10382313) by [sundry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/sundry/pseuds/sundry)



When Mihashi's gift manifests itself, it's almost too subtle to be anything: an increase in "manual dexterity," as Shiga-sensei calls it, that makes his pitches that much more precise, but that's all. 

It's Abe who notices, naturally, Abe who asks for a couple of pitches and then says, "That's it, isn't it?"

Mihashi looks at his mound and nods, eyes wide. Hanai isn't good at reading Mihashi, not really, but even he can see that Mihashi is thinking.

"It's—it's not much," Mihashi squeaks, barely audible from the mound.

Abe is staring at the ball in his hand, and Hanai elbows him. "Huh? Oh, Mihashi, give me a couple of more, okay?" Abe says, and tosses the ball back to Mihashi, an easy arc curving through the sky.

"Tell him you're okay with his thing," Hanai hisses at Abe, who blinks at him.

"What? Of course it's okay. It's more than okay."

"I know! I know that you know that it's okay! But he needs to know that you know it's okay, you know?" Hanai says, trying to keep his voice down to mild exasperation.

Abe looks utterly perplexed, but he nods and goes over to Mihashi, who fidgets on the mound, looking at his hands and then at Abe.

Hanai doesn't know exactly what Abe says; knowing Abe, it's probably something simultaneously confused and blunt, but Mihashi's shoulders relax, and he seems to stand a little straighter. Hanai sighs in relief at temporarily putting that fire out.

"Good job, captain," Tajima says, pounding him on the back. Hanai splutters and chokes, trying to catch Tajima's head and put him in a headlock, but Tajima dodges his arm easily and reaches up to sling his own arm over Hanai's shoulders. "Hey, what was that for? I said good job!"

Hanai resigns himself to being Tajima's armrest (why, he doesn't know—it can't be comfortable for Tajima to have his arm awkwardly slung up around his shoulders, what with the height difference). Abe is still talking quietly with Mihashi, and there seems to be some back and forth dialogue going on, with not too much cringing or shouting, so he'll count it as a win.

"Yeah, good job, captain," Coach Momoe says, also leaning on Hanai's shoulder. (Hanai sighs resignedly and shifts his weight to support them both.) "I bet Abe's talking about the cost. It can't be too serious, I think," she says speculatively.

Costs are pretty much always proportional to gifts, so yeah, that would make sense. Mihashi is the first from the team to get his, though everyone talks about it in the locker room, about what gifts their siblings have, and who is going to get the most badass gift, and about the gifts the girls in their class got a few years before. It’s nervousness, maybe, that causes it, because it’s your gift, and who knows what it’s going to be.

Everyone hears whispers when they're young that the government is going to invite you into their special task force if you can, like, blow something up with your mind, and all the laws say that you can't discriminate against someone for their gift, but it's not illegal to ask someone to name their gift on their college application for safety purposes-and if you have a gift for maths or unusual dexterity, so much the better. But most people have little things, small things, and sometimes, it's hard to tell if something's a gift or if it's just plain practice. Both, maybe. Their science teacher was telling them about studies aiming to see if children pick up gifts that correspond to the activities they practice, but apparently there aren't any conclusive results. And with Mihashi, who knows.

Mihashi rolls the baseball in his glove when Abe goes back to the plate and crouches down, and Hanai almost thinks that there’s something more settled about him, as though the gravity that takes him when he comes to the mound had suddenly shifted, holding him more steadily than moments before.

—

The next morning, Hanai wakes up with the ability to conjure small cat illusions. It's freakishly adorable, and gone before lunch, but not before Tajima convinces him to flood the clubroom with cats, though Tajima soon looks put out at the fact that you can't actually touch them. 

The gift sits uneasily in the corner of his mind, flickering in and out like all temporary gifts do.

"Man, how many is that?" Tajima says, his hand hovering over the pricked fur of a tiny tabby kitten's ears.

"Cats? About fifty," Hanai says, leaning back against the lockers and definitely not paying attention to the cats weaving around his feet like very fluffy shadows.

"Naw, gifts! You've tried out, what, twelve?" Tajima pouts. "I'm so freaking jealous! I've just gotten one, maybe two. Haha, did I tell you about the time I woke up one morning floating an inch above my bed? For a whole morning, I totally thought I was going to fly. And then I fell into a pond when I was in the middle of crossing it, but that's beside the point."

"Um, yeah. Maybe twelve." Or thirteen. Why is he such a weirdo. 

"The cats are nice," Tajima says when Hanai stays silent. The kittens gambol over each other. It is sickeningly cute. "Ugh, I can't believe you can't touch them. Worst-best gift ever."

Like the cats, the gift is gone before the end of the day, and Hanai can’t help but feel a little relieved, because seriously, cat illusions? Some part of his mind still remembers the shape of cats, though, their silky-softness and padded paws, and Tajima’s curious hand above their curved backs.

—

Mizutani's gift, naturally, is pretty flashy and kind of useless. 

Sometimes, Hanai can only think that, okay, there might be random scientific factors at work here, but it might also be the universe saying, no, no, this is too perfect. 

They're waiting out a thunderstorm in the field's shelter when Mizutani drapes himself over Izumi's shoulders. There's the snap of static, and Izumi yelps and flings Mizutani off of him. 

"Huh," Mizutani says. He rubs his hands together, and a few sparks fly off his fingers. "Huh!"

So apparently they need to be careful around electrical storms from now on. Hanai sighs. Someone is totally going to get hit by lightning at some point.

Hanai feels really awake that night, even after practice, and he ends up sneaking out the back door and trying not to wake his sisters up; he was just going to take a walk, but he ends up running, along the dike and all the way to school, for no particular reason, maybe just because the night is cool and mild and inviting. 

When he reaches the clubhouse, he braces his arms on his knees and tries to get his breath back. Yeah, he totally needs to work on getting faster. There’s a flash of light in the corner of his eye, and he glances over to see Mizutani sitting on the bench, sparks falling off his hands, far brighter in the night than during the day.

“Oh, hey! Can’t sleep either?” Mizutani says, grinning at him.

“Nah,” Hanai says. After a moment, he nods at Mizutani’s hands. “You’re already controlling that a lot better.”

"Yeah? I’ve been working on it. You know, I wonder if I could become a paramedic or something," Mizutani muses, "You know those CPR things that zap your heart? Like, I woudn't even need one of those!"

"I'm pretty sure those are set to a really specific voltage, man," Hanai says, but he's grinning.

"Oh, yeah. Hadn't thought about that! Still." He rubs two fingers together and draws them apart, a bright, leaping line stretched between them until his fingers are too far apart and the bridge collapses back into his skin. “Maybe I can help someone, right?”

"Yeah," Hanai says. He looks down at his hands. The lines in his palms look deep and rough in the sparking light, and he closes them together.

Of course, the day after, Mizutani shorts out a fuse at school by rubbing his hair with a balloon and accidentally— or so he says—touching an outlet. 

"...Wasn't me, guys! Ha, ha?" he hears Mizutani saying when people start asking why the whole floor just went dark. Hanai sighs.

(He does get Mizutani to recharge his cellphone when it was completely dead, at one point, which is pretty useful.)

—

Of all things, Abe can heal people. Well, kind of. It's hard to pinpoint exactly when they find out. It might be when Mihashi jams his second finger in his pitching hand and Abe kind of freaks out a bit, while Mihashi is trying to insist that he can still pitch. It's kind of a giant mess, and Hanai is rushing over, because he can see Abe stalking towards Mihashi on the mount.

"Abe—" Hanai says, hoping he can forestall whatever emotional blowout is going to happen here.

"Can you bend it?" Abe asks, completely ignoring Hanai. Right.

Mihashi tries, and winces. "Uh, I don't know—" Mihashi yelps when Abe grabs his hand, testing each finger.

There's nothing flashy that happens, but Abe hisses suddenly, and the pinch of pain between Mihashi's eyebrows clears. They're both shocked into silence for a second, Abe still holding Mihashi's hand between his own, before Abe pulls away and massages his hand, his jaw set.

"Abe, w-what did you—" Mihashi says tentatively, staring at Abe's hand.

Abe shakes his head. "You were going to continue playing like that? What were you thinking?" He's... well, he's not really yelling, which is an improvement. He tests his second finger, and Hanai can see his frown deepen. "It feels like it was just muscular, not the ligament. But still, you shouldn't take risks like that."

Mihashi looks utterly torn between apologizing and thorough confusion as to what just happened. "I— uh. Is your hand okay?"

Abe shrugs. "I'll just go and wrap it up before it gets jostled around too much. I can still catch, I'll just have to be careful."

Mihashi fidgets, looking worried.

"Hey, Mihashi, grab Tajima to practice in the bullpen for a bit," Hanai says, stepping into the awkward silence. "Come on, Abe."

Coach Momoe is frowning at them from across the field. Abe stares at his fingers. 

"Abe. Is that your—well, your thing?"

Abe looks up. "I guess so. It's neatly done: gift and price all in one. It's funny, I feel like I could transfer it to someone else, though." He waves his injured hand.

Hanai can't help laughing. "Promise me you won't go and break your hand just to pass it on to the opposing team's pitcher, because that would be kind of crazy."

"Too late," Abe says, deadpan.

It's kind of cowardly to run back to practice when Coach hands Abe a bag of ice to put on his fingers, but he really, really doesn't want to be the one to make the call as to what will happen if Mihashi gets seriously hurt. When he looks back, Coach has her head bent towards Abe, looking deeply, deeply serious.

Hanai honestly doesn't know what he would do, if he could take an injury away, but cripple himself in the process. It's a small thing, but it's also so damn big, and that's what's so scary about gifts. 

The crack of the bat pulls his head around, just in time to see Tajima throw the bat away and sprint to first, his grin as wide as the sky.

—

Tajima gets his next, and it just makes him even more ridiculously talented, even faster. He’s on fire in their practice game that afternoon, like himself, only more, like his genes have decided to let him off his rein and let him run. Hanai draws his hands down his face and thinks about beating his head against the wall a bit, because it suits Tajima perfectly and wraps around him like a snug, perfectly-fitted glove, and it isn’t fair. 

Tajima makes a clean hit between second and third and slides into first base, the umpire waving safe, safe. Hanai cheers along with everybody and watches as Tajima picks himself up and then grins at him from first base in a way that probably says, yes, Hanai, I want you to spend the rest of the summer alternately rethinking your sense of self-worth and furiously jerking off—or at least that’s the way Hanai’s interpreting it. Okay, Tajima would totally say the last part, at least.

But when Tajima’s smile widens from across the field, there’s just a muted rush of excitement and adrenaline that bubbles at the back of his mind, and a running, tripping thought saying, did he see that did he see that. 

It catches Hanai off balance, and Mizutani has to yell, “Batter up, captain!” before he snaps out of it and walks up to the plate.

He hits it all the way out to the outfield, and as he sprints towards first, he can’t tell if the quiet, adamant yes yes yes in the back of his mind is him or Tajima.

Hanai looks at Tajima, who gives him a thumbs-up as he edges out his lead. Hanai scrubs his hands over his burning face and tries not to think too hard about anything, because he’s pretty darn sure that ridiculously specific telepathy was not what he asked for. Great.

Having Tajima in the back of his head is—well, not as bad as Hanai would have predicted. It’s mostly this fizzling, bubbling stream of impressions and the occasional visceral longing for the baseball field in the middle of history class, Hanai’s head suddenly filled with the dusty heat of the diamond and the clank of a bat resonating at the base of his skull and tripping down his spine.

The problem with having someone in your mind is that you can’t exactly change the channel, and one moment, Hanai is in his room doing math homework, and the next, there are people making out in his head. There’s a moment when the images waver, as if unsure, but then start up again, and clearly Tajima is making up for the lack of porn during the day, because it, uh, gets steamy pretty fast. 

Trying to concentrate on the image makes it slip away, shifting and blurring, bringing some things into sharp focus before shifting to something else: soft pink lips, an inky-black wing of short hair against a flushed cheek, the generous curve of waist and breast, a strong, callused hand on that curve, the shift of muscles in a tan-lined arm and Hanai chokes and almost falls out of his chair because holy shit Hanai is looking at himself. 

Holy shit. 

Hoooooly shit.

There’s these flashes of Hanai making out with this cute short-haired curvy girl—and, like, really making out, not just kisses like in his Mom’s dramas, and then he’s got his hand up her skirt and he can’t see it but he knows, somehow, that he’s got his fingers inside her, and that she’s hot and wet.

He can feel his face burning. 

Hanai briefly considers thinking OH MY GOD TAJIMA STOP THIS as hard as he can, but Tajima probably wouldn’t pay attention. He realizes with a jolt that he’s getting hard. 

He stumbles over to the door of his room and locks it. Knowing his luck, Mom would end up walking in on him—what, having telepathic not-sex with an imaginary girl and his teammate? Hanai leans back against the door and thumps his head on it a couple of times. How is this his life.

He scrubs his hand over his face and definitely, definitely does not rub himself through his jeans. He just. Readjusts. It’s kind of uncomfortable.

Things are getting more jumbled, and he can’t tell exactly what’s going on, but there’s moaning and panting and kissing and a whole lot of skin. Hanai licks his lips. His throat is really dry. He is so, so hard right now, and he keeps having to remind himself not to move his hips, not to touch.

Tajima has to be close, by now. He can’t take that long, surely. Maybe this gift will just, like, wink out suddenly.

It feels hot and close inside his room, the summer heat leaking through the walls. He shivers suddenly at the feeling of a drop of sweat chasing down his—no, Tajima’s neck? This is confusing. 

Wait, is Tajima naked? 

...Probably, since that’s a question that can be answered with “yes” eighty percent of the time in the first place. Because his mind is a vile traitor, it supplies him with the image of Tajima in the locker room after practice tugging his shirt off, smiling and loose-limbed with tiredness.

God, he has to jerk off sooner or later. If. If he jerks off, but tries to think about something else, would that still be weird? It’s like, like guys jerking off to the same porn, that’s all, right? Right. 

Hanai tugs down his pants before he can talk himself out of it. He wraps his hand around his dick and his chest empties itself of air, breath hissing out between his teeth. Okay, so it’s been awhile. 

Hanai wonders briefly if this counts as losing your virginity. He’s trying not to think too hard about the fact that Tajima is imagining him having sex with a girl. Maybe he’s just a placeholder or something. He really, really hopes that this stupid telepathy thing isn’t reciprocal.

The image at the back of his mind blurs again, and the girl is gone, but Tajima is kissing him hard, hands cradling his jaw— it’s just there for a moment, and then it’s gone. 

“Wha—” he can hear himself say, and he claps a hand over his mouth and comes.

He slumps against the door, his breathing loud in his ears. 

He should probably be freaking out right about now. The thing is, Tajima is really pretty, or handsome, or whatever it is you say for guys— all compact muscle and warm, tanned skin, and well, he’s feeling really, really good, so that’s a bit of a lost cause. It’s like the usual loose-limbed good feelings, but like it’s been bounced back and amplified a couple of times.

He can freak out later. Yeah.

The gift—if you can call it that—goes away as quickly as it came. He's in the middle of class, and the staticky chatter of impressions just winks out between breaths. Hanai jerks his head up, but yeah, it's gone, and there's just his thoughts rattling around hollowly in his head.

Hanai tells himself that he doesn’t miss the fizzing energy of Tajima’s thoughts in the back of his mind, and he doesn’t. Really.

—

A few days later, Tajima hits a home run in a practice game, and Hanai knows there’s something wrong as soon as Tajima jogs across the home plate. He’s grimacing and holding his leg, and Hanai is out of the dugout as soon as he sees one of Tajima’s knees buckle under him. 

Tajima just looks surprised, the idiot, and all he says when Hanai boosts him up onto his shoulder is a breathy “Huh.” 

“Come on,” Hanai says, and he doesn’t like how frantic he sounds. Of course, he had to lose the weirdo telepathic gift right as Tajima falls apart on him, which didn't even make sense. The rest of the team is buzzing around him, and Tajima’s skin is burning hot under his hands. The back of his neck is fever-hot and dry, not sweaty. Hanai might have thought it was heatstroke, like they had said in his first-aid training, but Tajima had been in the shade of the dugout and drinking plenty of water, so that was weird. 

“It’s just cramps!” Tajima says, bracingly, and pats Hanai’s shoulder. 

Hanai brings him to the school nurse, and the nurse looks thoughtful and presses her lips together, taking Tajima’s vitals as Tajima chatters away at her, and asks Hanai a few questions about what Tajima had been doing, whether he had eaten and drunk anything. Tajima’s mom comes to get him, and Tajima waves cheerfully at Hanai, saying that he’d be back tomorrow, and that they’d better not lose that practice game. 

Tajima isn’t back for a couple of days, and when he comes back to class, he’s walking normally, like nothing had happened. Hanai corners him by his locker at break.

“So are you falling apart?” Hanai says, and if his voice goes kind of high and screechy on those last words, well, that’s just normal.

“Nah, ‘s just my gift. Apparently I'm going to stay pretty short," Tajima says offhandedly, "Especially if I use it too often. I am going to get taller! But the physio said something about the gift taking a lot of the body's resources, or something, even when it's just in the background. I have to work with the physio lady for a couple of things, and she’s really pretty, and she has these amazing—“ 

Hanai cuts him off right there.

—

Hanai had once volunteered at an old people's home for a community service project in school. 

He'd liked it, and the ladies always patted his cheek and said that young men these days were so handsome. It was sad, though, to see old men and old ladies gradually losing hold over their gift. Some of them just had their gift fade away, and they always told Hanai that they felt like something was missing. Others just couldn't control it—he remembered an old man with the ability to call animals to him, his windows closed and birds chirping frantically outside, and the thumping of wings against the pane. The orderlies helped, though, and as soon as the nurse came in, the birds settled on the sill or flew away, like a wave collapsing and receding—apparently, being ungifted helped suppress the gifts or something. So yeah, having a gift was cool and flashy, but being ungifted could be just as useful, even if there weren’t any big blockbuster movies about them.

They all thought that Sakaeguchi was ungifted—the guy had never shown any sign of trying out gifts, or anything, and it just made sense, right? Hanai could see Sakaeguchi working in a nursing home, because he was just good at those kinds of things—people and stuff.

So it’s kind of a surprise to peek into the locker room while he's putting things away and to see Sakaeguchi's bent head and his arms resting over his knees.

Hanai freezes and almost drops the bats he has in his arms, scrabbling at one to keep it from rolling off.

This is the first time that Hanai has ever seen Sakaekuchi really and truly upset. There's something really wrong about seeing him be this unhappy, and Hanai is the absolute worst at comforting people, but he should definitely see what's up, and then Sakaekuchi starts talking.

"Apparently, I have to get registered. They keep tabs on these sorts of gifts."

“Yeah?” And that’s Suyama.

For a few seconds, there's no sound except for the rustle of their uniforms against the bench as one of them shifts nervously.

“I just said—I didn’t mean it, I just wanted him to leave Mihashi alone—I told that jerk to get lost, and he just turned right around and I didn’t think anything of it, but now they’re saying they can’t find him, that he walked into the woods somewhere and—“ Sakaeguchi stops, breathing hard. “They found him again, but I had to tell him to, to stay here, to not leave, and. And yeah.” 

There's this steel in his voice, something Hanai's never heard before. "I never want to use it again."

"Um, how do I say this— without sounding really weird, I mean," Suyama says, after a few seconds. He sounds nervous, which is weird for him.

The whole situation is weird. Sakaekuchi and Suyama are supposed to be the steady bedrock of the team, calm and reliable. Hanai suddenly feels guilty for listening in, like he's hearing something he shouldn't.

"I'm glad it's someone like you that got a gift like that," Suyama blurts out.

There's a silence. "How is this good?" Sakaeguchi says. His voice is soft, carefully neutral.

"No, no, like—if there's anyone I think would never, ever take advantage of that sort of gift, it's you," Suyama says, more urgently, "You're way too principled. And nice. And you just wouldn't."

There's another silence, but it seems less heavy this time.

"Do you think so?" Sakaeguchi says, his head tilting towards Suyama.

"Of course!" Suyama says fiercely.

There’s a long, shuddering sigh that pushes out of Sakaeguchi’s chest, and Hanai freezes again, because he’s intruding, definitely. He juggles the bats again and does a half-hop moonwalk thing to try and make a halfway smooth exit, and almost runs straight into Tajima, who raises his hands and opens his mouth, but Hanai is able to get out this shushing noise that sounds more like an angry duck hiss than anything else and usher him back out of the clubhouse with his bats. 

"What?" Tajima says, once they're outside. He's got his game face on.

"Nothing—" he says, putting the bats down to buy himself some time and not look at Tajima's incredulous face. "I mean, something, but I feel like Sakaeguchi should tell the team himself, I don't know."

"Okay," Tajima says easily. "Wanna get ice-cream?"

Hanai opens his mouth, closes it again. "Okay."

"Great! Your treat?" Tajima says.

"Okay—I mean, what, no—" Hanai says, but Tajima is already walking down the road, having a very serious debate about what kind of ice cream to get, because July is the perfect time for melon ice cream, but red bean ice cream is always awesome, and so on. When Hanai looks back, the light in the clubhouse is still on, bright and steady against the summer night.

Hanai can't sleep that night. There's the press of something inside his veins, waiting quietly, and he doesn't know what it is.

—

Hanai gets another gift. It’s some kind of weak telekenesis that sits uneasily inside his skin for a day or so, and then sputters out. By dusk, he’s left with the ability to make things rattle around him a bit, if he concentrates really hard, and by the time it’s dark, he can just make the air around him shift: at most a weak breeze that barely cuts through the mugginess of the evening. 

Hanai doesn’t hear him come up behind him, but he can suddenly feel Tajima's eyes on his back. Tajima isn't saying anything, surprisingly quiet in the warm night air, but Hanai feels like there's this weight pushing him down, making his shoulders slump. 

Even if his gift turns out to be something moderately more useful than kittens or rattling things or ridiculously specific mindreading, he won't be able to catch up. But of course he has to be stubborn, has to keep on pushing even though this, this is never going to amount to anything.

"Hey," Tajima says.

Hanai turns around, and Tajima is standing with his arms crossed and his head tipped to the side, curious. "You know it doesn't matter, right?"

All at once, Hanai feels so damn angry. What does Tajima know? 

He spins around and shoves Tajima back. "Of course it matters!" he manages to spit out. "This is your whole future, basically, this is what you are from now on, and I’m the dude who makes fluffy kittens and chases after someone who can make fire shoot from his fingers."

Tajima's expression shuffles through confusion, hurt (which Hanai resolutely ignores) and settles on something like his game face. “I can’t make fire shoot from my fingers,” Tajima says, missing the point completely, as usual.

Tajima shoves him back, and Hanai tries to ignore the feeling of Tajima's too-warm hands on his chest.

"What do you know," Hanai spits out, and it doesn’t make any sense

He turns away to go home, but Tajima grabs his shirt, saying "Uh-uh, nope, you aren't getting off that easily."

"Ugh, get off!" Hanai twists to get away, to go run somewhere for a very long time, but Tajima just latches on tighter.

"Nope! Not until you start talking."

"Tajima, shut up, just shut up," Hanai jerks his arm away when Tajima grabs at it, face set.

"You're going to have to do a lot more than that to get me to shut up, Hanai! What the heck is up with you?" Every time Hanai backs away, Tajima's quick hands are there, fastening around his arm or in his shirt. "What do you want?" Tajima says baldly, as if it were that simple, as if it were a question you could answer as easily as slipping into a new skin.

"I don't know! I don't know, okay?"

Tajima stills a bit, no longer trying to climb all over him to get him to stay. "Hanai, you're really terrible at lying."

"I want to be as good as you, okay!" he shouts, shoving Tajima back again. "I want to be as good as you, better than you, and I want you to notice!" He can feel his face flushing. "Is that what you wanted to hear from me?" he says, much softer now.

Now that it's out there, now that it's said and lying on the ground between them, limp and tired, Hanai feels the anger drain out of him all at once. "I've got to go. I promised I'd be home for my sisters. I—"

Tajima still has that too-focused game look on his face, and Hanai bets that if he touched Tajima's skin now, it would be burning up. He's so stupid. God, he should have just walked away from all this. Continued on the way things were. (Except that things can't go on the way they were, not now, not when everything is changing.)

"You are so dumb," Tajima says, his eyes bright and his face serious. "Come on, run with me. Last one to the field is a rotten egg."

"Are you going to use it?" Hanai says. It should have come out more accusatory, but it's just tired.

"Yep!" Tajima says. "If you give up, I'm going to hit you so hard."

Hanai doesn't know what to think anymore. "Yeah. Yeah, okay."

They run. They run by the dike and into neighborhoods they haven't ever been in, their shoes slapping on the sidewalk and their breathing harsh in the damp air. He puts up a damn good fight. Tajima passes him at the finish line of the baseball field, and for a moment, he seems so far ahead that there might as well be oceans between them. Hanai passes the line and shudders slowly to a stop. 

He grasps Tajima's arm, and Tajima feels like he's burning from the inside out. "Come on, cool down a bit," he says, still gulping air.

The pains hit about five minutes later, and Tajima sits down hard, clutching at his leg. There are beads of sweat pearling on his forehead, Hanai notices when he sits down beside him. 

Hanai sighs and pulls Tajima's leg into his lap, digging his fingers into the lean muscles of Tajima's calf. "Um, your physio said this helps, right?" There's that unnatural warmth, as usual, and the muscles twitching unevenly under his skin. 

Tajima is grinning really hard in spite of the fact that this must hurt like hell. He scoots up closer to Hanai. "Hey, hey, do the other part of my leg," he says, his thigh across Hanai's lap. 

All of a sudden, it's like something's come loose, some catch winding things tight that suddenly unspools, and Hanai smiles down at his knees. "Ugh, you are so obnoxious."

Tajima shivers under his hands when he digs in hard. "Man, why didn't you do this before?" he says, that tight edge of pain gradually smoothing itself out of his voice. 

Hanai shrugs, since answering that would be embarrassing on so many levels, and presses his hand up the back of Tajima's thigh. 

Tajima interrupts himself with this soft, guttural sound that coils in Hanai's belly and makes him flush. 

"Maybe I should go back to doing your calves," he manages to stammer out, his hands stilling on Tajima's leg, curling around the bony peak of Tajima's knee. 

"What? No, that's stupid." Tajima slings his other leg into Hanai's lap, narrowly avoiding a really unfortunate collision. "You should do the other one! Wait, no, that's not going to work." Tajima shifts around a bit, wincing when his legs jolt. All of a sudden, Tajima is sitting in his lap, warm and compact and exactly what Hanai doesn't need right now. He wonders if he should tell Tajima at some point about the mind reading thing.

"Are you— what are you—" Hanai stammers.

Tajima kisses him, warm and clumsy and wet, and Hanai doesn’t know what to do with his lips for a few seconds before he kisses back and pushes his hands up the back of Tajima’s shirt, feeling the muscles shifting and the embers of his gift through his skin.

“Are you going to stop being dumb?” Tajima asks when he pulls back, and it sounds honestly curious.

Hanai lets out a huff, half a laugh that gets buried in Tajima’s shirt when he leans his head against Tajima’s shoulder. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.”

"Good," Tajima says. "Let's make out and then get ice cream."

And yeah, okay, that does sound pretty good.

—

One day, Hanai wakes up. There’s a thin stream of sunlight coming through his curtain, and he rolls over in bed to look at his clock. There’s still half an hour before he needs to get up for practice. When he rolls back onto his back, there’s a feeling like something has settled into his bones, an indefinable feeling of rightness that makes him feel grounded in his body. But not just that—it's twisted around a sense of possibility, like the world has suddenly grown wider, opening up before him so frightening and new.

He breathes in and holds that feeling inside his chest, pressed in his lungs and coursing in his veins, and pushes open his curtains.


End file.
